The Republican Party got what it deserved!

If you are at the commanding heights of an economic and financial system the one-man-one-vote equation is a problem for you. You know that all the hard work and all the wealth you have accumulated does not give you more say than someone who is unemployed. The problem is all the more acute when trying to sway legislation in your favor. In terms of potential votes, there simply are not enough like you compared with the millions of workers, the poor and the unemployed.

This inconvenient statistic leads to two complementary strategies.

The first is to reduce the number of people who would end up voting. This could be done by either preventing them to access the voting booth or poison politics to such an extent that people will see no point in voting… or do both.

The second strategy is to split the remaining votes. In order to do so, the establishment of the Republican party proposed a Faustian pact to the socially conservative electorate. The terms were in essence as follows:

“We will protect your way of life and from state interference and in return, you let us run the economy.”

In practice this translates into: “you can teach evolution and we can hire migrants”. Both require weak or no government oversight.

Abundant, sometimes cheaper labor contributes to potentially larger profits. Immigration, whether legal or illegal, permanent or seasonal, is a natural solution to shortages in the work place.

But abundant immigration also contributes to changing the physical and cultural landscape. This is why the Faustian pact has become increasingly one-sided. Real wages have stagnated for the past four decades and migrants brought their way of life and contributed to change the landscape both physically and culturally.

This is also why the socially conservatives are in revolt. Up to a point, they were able to grudgingly withstand increasing wealth disparities as long as their communities remained untouched. But their perception is that now, their beliefs are no longer protected. They have nothing to tangible to show for having entered into this covenant.

The establishment’s economic interest diverged to such a degree that little more than lip service could be paid to socially conservative policies.

Unlike in Western Europe where the socially conservatives can find a distinct political voice (UKIP, Front National, etc…) the Republican Party has been until now the single expression of these two constituencies.

Now the quarrel is in the open and the socially conservatives are taking matters into their own hands.